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Moschus and the Meadow

To move from Sophronius’s Miracles of Cyrus and John to the Spiritual Meadow of John Moschus is to step into another world: from the hustle and bustle of an Alexandrian cult to the stillness of the Eastern deserts, from the complexities of the mundane to the simplicities of a world rendered black and white, and from the high-minded rhetoric of the sophist to the simple koinē of the monk. The differences in presentation are nevertheless deceptive, for the reader will discover fundamental strands of shared interest: like Sophronius’s Miracles, Moschus’s Meadow questions the relation of asceticism to the sacramental structures of the Church; like the Miracles, it insists on strict adherence to Chalcedonian doctrine as the basis for spiritual endeavor; and like the Miracles again, it seeks to extend the demands of ascetic virtue to Christians of all vocations.